Vent on Generative A.I. & Industrialism
or: Using Animal Products as a Deflection Doesn't Work.
Both generative AI and factory meat/plant production have massive carbon footprints and leave us worse off as a people and as cultures than if we didn't have them. These wildly unethical, unsustainable industries are not worth the effort of reforming and must be abolished. This goes for Amazon, Shein, Temu, and more. We keep sacrificing our autonomy and skills and planet for our short-term convenience, and we will keep paying the price for it.
I am consistently shocked and deflated by the average person's sheer inability to see the intersection of the Cali wildfires and AI and colonialism. The root evil is the same — Capitalism. The common denominators here are unsustainable, exponential growth economies and hierarchies of knowledge and authority. More people means more land used for housing, meaning longer commutes from the sprawling suburbs, meaning much, much more carbon emissions from making, using, and refueling private cars due to lacking public transit and cultural norms, and much more emissions from expanding the factory farms and mines and forests to meet the needs of population booms because oftentimes the suburbs replace locally-owned, lower-impact farms and agriculture, limiting or outright doing-away-with access to local goods and local economies. More data centers to store our data with increasingly more energy-intensive servers, energy we do not have the infrastructure to create or sustain, that is fed with the continued destruction of ecosystems and lands and peoples — such as we see in the Congo and indigenous peoples that have resource-rich lands. This and factory farming leave less and less room for resilient ecosystems that would otherwise naturally confront wildfires, and a lack of forest thinning and Indigenous stewardship (indigenous tribes preserve a majority of biodiversity) means more devastating fires will happen more frequently, while we are left with fewer ways to challenge resource scarcity and preserve livability in higher-risk areas — and overall! Under capitalism, schools become overwhelmed with students while teacher wages stagnate and demand for productivity rises, giving us fewer literate citizens and worse curriculums. More automation takes jobs away from working-class folks while experience requirements make job hunting harder, and stagnating wages produce poorer and poorer citizens, thereby consumption of cheap goods like plastics and knock-offs becomes dominant over cotton and wool and wood and metal, things we can break down and recycle. Cheaper goods are usually lower quality, and most things accessible to working folks are not built to last, so we buy more and, in the deed, waste more. We are rapidly, rapidly approaching levels of danger and unlivable conditions at the expense of us all in the name of maximizing rich folks' gains and having to think about our lives, choices, responsibility, and impact, less.
To combat any and all of these, we have to make the choices as individuals and collective to organize systemically and create alternatives. To need less, buy less, but have products that last longer. We must create and choose local alternatives, building local and grassroots power. We must create and support biodiversity initiatives, circular economies, sustainable forestry and recycling practices, and take an active role wherever we live and for however long.
By way of benefiting from all the Earth has to offer, we innately take on the responsibility of being principled, conscious, and good stewards.